It’s not an easy role for Aitana Sánchez-Gijón (Roma, 53 years old) to take on in ‘La jefa’. The first film by Fran Torres, a director with experience in the world of advertising, hits theaters this Friday and touches on a subject as dark and disturbing as it is attractive: surrogacy. The actress plays Beatriz, a highly successful fashion designer, who offers Sofía, her brand new apprentice, a deal: to keep the child she is carrying, in exchange for the promise of having a solid professional career in the future.
-How does this paper come into your hands?
-Through my agency. It was a proposal made directly by Fran Torres, the director of the film, and his producers. I received the script, read it and it seemed to me that there was very powerful material there and I sat down to chat with Fran, who I don’t know because it’s his first film. I saw his material as an advertising director, which has an impressive career, and he had also directed two very powerful short films with very interesting acting work. Talking to him I realised that the material in ‘La jefa’ is very good material to develop a story of characters and that Fran has the sensitivity and the ability to lead that ship. And there we decided that to make this film, which is a small production, which is going to be shot in four weeks, it is absolutely essential to have a sufficient rehearsal period, which was almost a month, to work very thoroughly, investigate the characters, improvise, test, remove, add, modify that script that was taking on another dimension until achieving that the genre was at the service of this story of characters and not the other way around, a story of characters at the service of a genre.
-It is, as you say, a story basically with two characters and a location… With so few elements, isn’t it more difficult to maintain the intensity of the story?
-It wasn’t because of the exhaustive prior work and because a creative bubble was created between Fran, Cumelén (Sofía) and me, in which Fran created a work environment, which one might think would end up being catastrophic because time was running out due to the fact that it was a small production and exposed to a thousand ups and downs, in which he always made us feel that we had all the time in the world and that the only important thing was us. From there, it was possible to create the atmosphere necessary to tell this story that would have been impossible otherwise.
-How does one prepare for a role like this, which has so many different aspects? It goes from the demanding, but also gentle, nature of a mentor, to the desperation to fulfill a desire.
-Well, you’re there with the speleologist’s flashlight, trying to enter the cave and illuminate all the nooks and crannies to understand that soul, that dark side and those motivations and the reasons that lead it to be the way it is and to act the way it does. And there you discover a deep wound, which is obviously already there in the script, and that wound is the gold from which everything else is generated.
-And does one end up understanding their characters?
-Yes, so much so that I end up having Stockholm syndrome with them. I mean, I have Stockholm syndrome with Beatriz, I had it with Medea, who murdered her children; with Nora, who abandoned her family… With all of them. I end up understanding them so much that I can even justify them and then I have to slow down a bit (laughs).
-The film, especially when it comes to dealing with Sofía’s character, also reflects the reality of a woman who, at a given moment, has to choose between advancing in her professional career or putting it aside and having a child.
-This, unfortunately, continues to be the case. The film poses the moral dilemma she finds herself in: deciding whether to have that child or not. And suddenly she finds herself with a seemingly very advantageous deal that she believes she can handle calmly. Well, both of them believe they can enter those waters and come out unscathed and the truth is that reality shows them that they can’t, that the thing is out of their control. They are two women who believe they have a lot of control over their destinies and are very powerful. In reality, one is the reflection of the other, both look at themselves in the same mirror and Beatriz sees herself reflected in this young Sofia and Sofia would like to be like Beatriz. This symbiotic relationship makes them believe that apparently what they are going to do can be done calmly and reality shows them that it can’t.
-The film touches on a controversial and current issue, that of surrogacy. What is your opinion on this? Has it changed during the development of the film?
-No, the film hasn’t changed my mind, it just keeps raising questions, which is what has happened to me since I became aware of this situation. I know people around me who have had children this way and at the same time it raises an ethical problem for me because they are women in need; once again the woman’s body is at the service of someone who can pay for it… I have many questions and few answers.
-Do you think a film like this can change the opinion of anyone who sees it?
-I don’t think that’s the intention of the film, at all. The film is raising things that are in the air, that happen to us as a society, and it places them in a plot in which two human beings are going through a series of circumstances and things that influence them and decisions that they make with the cards they think they have in the deck, but beyond that, how it modifies the viewer who sees the film, I think that goes beyond the intentions of the film.
-It was often said that there were no mature characters in cinema, that once a woman turns forty her career is over. Do you think that is changing?
-Yes, fortunately yes. In the last few years things have been changing, although not enough yet, but I think we are on the right track and this film is an example, without going any further. I think this has also been the result of the proliferation of series, of platforms, of the fact that we have been watching fiction from other countries for many years now and that they are ahead of us in this sense, with powerful, complex female characters of all ages for a longer time and, fortunately, we are taking note and following the example.
-Do you see any contraindications to the explosion of platforms and content?
-Yes, of course. The issue of the algorithm, of making products like churros, of fast, easy consumption and in which the authors are no longer authors, but are products of a certain platform. What we do must go through another side, right? I’m not saying that there is no commercial vocation, it has to exist, of course, but that a director should be the owner of his work and of the story he is telling. If not, they also become like chains of fast consumption and that distorts the creative world.
-Despite everything, the benefits will be greater, right?
-At the moment, they provide a lot of work and the more things there are, the more likely it is that interesting productions will emerge, although there is a large percentage that are not.
-You have been working for many years. Is there a moment when this uncertainty that an actor lives in ends?
-Never. No.
-How is that managed?
-As best as possible, with a lot of anxiety and that constant feeling of uncertainty and living pretty much day to day, actually.
Have you been told no many times in your profession?
-I’ve been told no on occasion, but fortunately I’ve been told yes more often (laughs). I’ve been very lucky.
-Were you very upset about not winning the Goya?
-The truth is that everyone had convinced me that I was going to win it, even the media polls, and of course it was a letdown, but it’s part of the game. I was very clear that my fellow nominees deserved it as much or more than me, it wasn’t a question of one work being better than another, but that it seemed that the fact that I had never been nominated before weighed heavily, and everyone convinced me that this was going to be the case and when it doesn’t happen… Now I’ve learned that I have to go with zero expectations, like at the Platino Awards on Sunday (laughs).
-What was it like working with Almodóvar?
-Fabulous. It was a gift. The truth is that all the actors and actresses in this country and in a large part of the world have fantasized about working with Pedro at some point, and suddenly it was with a character like Teresa, who is a sweetheart, one of those iconic characters in Pedro’s filmography, who has such a strong and special personality, weight and substance… It was fabulous.
-A few weeks ago, Maribel Verdú explained on a television programme that she had been ostracised by powerful people in the Spanish film industry because she refused to do certain things. Have you experienced anything similar?
-You know what happens? I haven’t experienced traumatic situations in which I’ve been placed. I’ve experienced them in life, not in my profession, as a woman, in the cinema, as a child, I was touched by someone and the only thing I could think of was to change seats… If it happens to me now or to my daughter, I assure you that there would be a fuss because tolerating things has changed, I wouldn’t put up with certain things anymore. In my life, it has happened to me, without a doubt, many times. And in my profession, I have had this feeling of having to be careful, with restraint, but there have not been situations of abuse. In my case, there have not been any.
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